Destruction — Chapter 8

The voice of a child, filled with resentment, stirred up phantom pain in wounds long healed. Pressing down firmly near a distorted tattoo, Woobeom narrowed his brows and took a deep breath.

“…Fuck, these hallucinations are seriously fucked.”

Letting out a heavy breath at the relentless memories of the past, Jung Woobeom gripped the weapon in his hand. He had just spotted another shadow encroaching on his own like a damn rat. But this wasn’t the past.

He knew that well enough.

‘So what if I’m fucked up?’

He needed something to take his anger out on.

Given the number of zombie corpses, it was clear that more than one person had attacked the convenience store. But to his surprise, only one attacker came at him. Judging from the sound, movement, and breath, Woobeom deduced it was just one man trying to stab him in the back. He ducked low, dodging the knife.

Woobeom despised people who killed others for their own gain. Like the man now trying to ambush him from behind. So when Woobeom dodged the surprise attack with ease, the panic that spread across the man’s face was satisfying to watch.

It was easy to knock down someone who’d lost their balance. From his crouched position, Woobeom struck the man’s ankle with the broken mop handle. The bone cracked and burst through the skin with a single blow. As the man screamed in pain, his heavy body crumpled.

“Ghh—!”

It didn’t take long for the man to be rolling on the floor. Woobeom drove the jagged end of the mop handle into the man’s shoulder. He pierced the flesh cleanly, minimizing splatter, but some blood still splashed onto his raincoat.

“Aaagh!”

“Shut your damn mouth.”

As the man clutched his shattered ankle and writhed in pain, Woobeom shoved a heap of trash into his mouth. When the man instinctively reached for his mouth to remove the suffocating wad, he screamed again—this time muffled by tissue. Woobeom had picked up the fallen knife and rammed it through the man’s jaw and hand in one strike. It was merciless. More dark blood sprayed over the raincoat.

As the man’s eyes rolled back and froth bubbled from his lips, the veins in his face had turned black. Woobeom clicked his tongue. There was no need for hands anymore. He stood, pressing his foot down on the knife hilt sticking out at an angle.

Once. Twice.

His full weight behind the heel, the blade drove in like a nail, slicing through bone. Crunch. Crack. The knife pierced from chin to the back of the skull with a grisly sound. The spasming man, unable to even close his wide, lifeless eyes, finally stopped moving.

“Dead already?”

For someone who came in so hot, it was a pretty pathetic end. Woobeom checked the area for more attackers but found no other living people. In the storage room, he discovered four bodies in matching outfits. Judging by the large bag the man had dropped earlier, it looked like an internal dispute had broken out during the division of money or supplies. It wasn’t uncommon for scumbags to kill their own out of greed.

With the inside now deemed safe, Woobeom called for Yoon Saejin, who was still waiting outside. The streets were quiet, so he didn’t need to raise his voice for Saejin to hear him. Saejin lifted the shutter and stepped inside, only for his face to gradually pale.

Shelves were toppled over, and damaged packaging crunched under his every step. The smell of blood grew stronger the farther he walked in, adding to the sickening atmosphere.

“Hyung…?”

He approached Woobeom, who was tearing off the tape around his wrists. Bloodstains were all over him, and at his feet lay a corpse with rolled-back eyes. The blackness in the man’s eye veins made it clear—he’d been infected. Saejin felt a small sense of relief that Woobeom hadn’t killed a regular person.

“You’ve got blood on you. Don’t come too close.”

Heeding the warning, Saejin stepped back—only to stumble slightly on some debris. He slapped his cheek lightly to focus. The store clerk was dead. The man on the ground had been infected. It looked like a robber had broken in, and Woobeom had handled the situation.

Saejin’s gaze shifted to the man Woobeom had taken down. A broken stick was lodged in his shoulder, and his jaw and hand had been pinned together. It was an especially gruesome sight, enough to make Saejin grimace.

He went to the counter, grabbed a box cutter, and returned to Woobeom, who was still peeling tape from his skin. The floor was so slick with blood that his sneakers squeaked with every step.

“It’s not coming off well… Here, use this.”

Instead of taking the box cutter right away, Woobeom stared at Saejin’s pale skin. When Saejin wiggled the tool at him, wondering why he wouldn’t take it, Woobeom’s tightly pressed lips finally parted.

“Are you stupid or something?”

“…What?”

“You saw it. I killed someone.”

So what was he trying to say? Saejin’s lips parted blankly. Woobeom’s sudden attempt to scare him made no sense—especially in this situation, where it benefited neither of them. Saejin tried to figure out his intentions, but nothing came to mind.

“So what, are you saying you’re going to kill me too?”

“……”

“…You’re not, right? Why are you acting like this all of a sudden?”

His hypersensitive reaction to the looting, the brutal way he killed the robber—it was all disorienting. Saejin wanted to know what Jung Woobeom was really trying to say. If he could, he wanted to pull those buried thoughts out of him. And Saejin’s blunt question pierced right through what Woobeom hadn’t been able to say. A flash of pain crossed his twisted expression.

“Who knows.”

Before his emotions could run wild, Woobeom wiped his lips and let out a rough breath. Then, using the box cutter Saejin had offered, he began cutting the tape.

As the tape around his wrist peeled away bit by bit, Woobeom ground his molars. Even he knew how pathetic he looked, clinging to the past. The fact that he’d nearly taken it out on some kid embarrassed him a little.

‘…Fuck.’

It was strange to be this concerned about Yoon Saejin, someone he’d met only a few hours ago. Maybe it was because Saejin seemed to be around the same age as his brother who’d died so meaninglessly. How old had he said he was again? He was sure Saejin mentioned it, but he couldn’t quite remember. While rubbing his wrist, red from the tape, Woobeom asked,

“…Yoon Saejin, how old did you say you were again?”

Saejin squinted like he thought it was a weird question, but still raised two fingers on one hand and five on the other.

“Figures… even your age is exactly the same.”

Tossing the bloodied tape and raincoat aside, Woobeom reached for a new raincoat from the convenience store’s shelf. Saejin, sitting on the counter and watching, quietly turned Woobeom’s muttered words over in his mind.

‘Age?’

Woobeom had seemed off just moments ago, and then asked a completely random question about age. Then made a comment that sounded like he was comparing Saejin to someone. It didn’t make much sense, but Saejin just tilted his head slightly without pressing the issue. He figured there was probably some reason and chose to bury his curiosity.

Meanwhile, Woobeom found a spray disinfectant among the daily goods and doused himself in it. Then, after a glance at the bottle, he turned to Saejin and started spraying him too.

Pssht, pssht, pssht.

The cold mist hit Saejin’s unguarded body.

“Ugh, that’s cold!”

Saejin flailed his hands and ducked his head, jolted out of his wandering thoughts by the alcohol spray.

---

With nowhere else to go, the convenience store became their temporary base. They didn’t plan to stay long, but they at least needed to clean up the corpses for hygiene’s sake.

“Leave it. I’ll take care of it.”

Woobeom stopped Saejin from approaching the body and busied himself. Watching him work, Saejin was once again reminded that this man had been a gangster. The way he handled the corpse made it clear he had experience. He only moved a few times, but before long the body had been carried into the storage room.

“Whoa… are those all people?”

A startled voice escaped from between his lips. Beyond the man Woobeom had killed, several limp bodies were visible through the open storage door. Without explaining, Woobeom closed the door, indicating there was no need to know more.

“All done?”

“Not yet.”

To keep the stench of rotting flesh from seeping into the store, Woobeom taped multiple layers of polyethylene bags over the door. The makeshift seal of plastic and duct tape was impressive to look at.

Woobeom’s busy movements only wrapped up after he checked the shutter. The man grabbed two drinks—enough to wet their throats—and approached Saejin. Squatting on the floor, Saejin looked up at the shoes that entered his line of sight.

“Why are you sitting there?”

“I can’t be the only one resting comfortably, can I?”

In other words, he’d been reading the mood. Woobeom let out a dry chuckle at the bland answer and gestured toward the table behind them. It meant they should sit and drink. Saejin’s thighs were numb from crouching so long. He gave his legs a few light taps and made his way to the table chair.

“…Are you drinking?”

“Beer doesn’t count as alcohol.”

“Then what is it?”

“Carbonated barley tea.”

He couldn’t tell if that was a joke or not. Was he supposed to laugh here? Woobeom’s tone didn’t carry a hint of humor, which made it even more confusing. Instead of making a big reaction, Saejin just gave a small nod. Woobeom wet his tongue with a sip of beer, stared at Saejin for a long moment, and then shifted his gaze to the table.

‘You asked why I did it….’

Sometimes, hearing his younger sibling’s voice or encountering a situation similar to the past would make him lose control. He never knew when something unexpected might happen again, and since he’d decided to stick with Yoon Saejin for the time being, he figured he should at least explain his behavior. It wasn’t a pleasant story, but it seemed like a fitting side dish for the beer.

“I didn’t have parents either.”

The fingers holding Saejin’s drink twitched slightly, and his chest stirred for a moment. It was hard to define the feeling, but perhaps it was empathy. Though the topic had turned heavy, Woobeom’s expression remained indifferent.

“I had a younger sibling, seven years apart, so I had to drop out of high school. Part-time jobs after school weren’t enough to cover our living expenses.”

“…Ah.”

“There are tons of shitty bosses in this world who scam kids out of their wages. Underpaying is standard, and sometimes they just don’t pay at all. Fuck, just thinking about it pisses me off again. I should’ve beaten the shit out of those bastards while I had the chance.”

There had been the option of leaving his sibling at a facility, but he’d kept that as a last resort. He couldn’t shake the feeling that doing so would mean abandoning them. Besides, his sibling was someone who only knew him. There was no guarantee they’d do well in a place where they had no connections. And maybe it was blind confidence, but back then, he truly believed he could provide for them.

“I ended up doing debt collection gigs. That kind of work’s so dirty even gangsters avoid it, so they usually bring in clueless underage kids.”

“…Don’t tell me that’s how you got those scars?”

“When a debtor tries to die to get out of paying, you have to throw your body in to stop them.”

His pale cheeks turned blue in an instant. He remembered Woobeom’s torso from the bathroom. Even the scars alone had looked severe, and now he realized they’d come with a grim backstory. No matter how much money debt collection might bring in, it had been far too reckless. What struck Saejin most was that there hadn’t been a single adult by Woobeom’s side to teach him a safer way to endure hardship.

To go through the pain of torn flesh multiple times and still not be able to quit—that must have meant things were truly desperate. Though it wasn’t his own experience, Saejin furrowed his brows and instinctively clutched at his chest. His heart ached in quiet sympathy for just how hard it must have been for Woobeom.

“I guess even I had some shame… Whenever I got hurt badly, I couldn’t go home. My sibling would’ve found it suspicious.”

“……”

“Then one day, I got stabbed in a bad spot and was unconscious for about a week…. The moment I woke up in that hospital bed, I had this weird chill down my spine, and it felt like my insides were twisting.”

Woobeom tapped the empty beer can a few times and let out a faint, bitter smile.